I Was Mentored by a Convicted Murderer. This is What I Learned

How to survive, thrive and ascend in the harshest circumstances

T’was the summer that I was a disciple of Eric Naposki. I had been a target of bullies the year before. Beaten to a pulp and forced into submission. Battered on the back with an enormous dildo. Threatened with rape and chased to the outer edges of the haunted wilderness. There is a bad energy in the forests of New England. H.P. Lovecraft wrote about it. Stolen land and whatnot. 

I returned home in a shiver. My personality broken and defeated. Something like McMurphy being lobotomized. The human spirit temporarily disgraced. But the thing about getting bullied, which no one likes to admit in this age, is that despair awakens our inherent intelligence. It awakens the bodies ability to grow and heal itself. To be a realized individual, a human must master the god given powers he possesses and build upon that. Having been beaten and tormented for a week, I noticed a weak spot in my consciousness: I was not as strong or as tough as I had believed. 

When the personality is broken, it never returns to its original state. There is always a heaviness that accompanies it. Trauma adds texture to the spirit, and those who lack trauma, lack a kind of human depth that is essential for being a sage in this life. 

Football camp was my first real reckoning with danger. No supervision and no one coming to save me. Just left to my own devices and the barbarity of my teammates. My survival depended on the mercy of the upperclassmen. 

A year later, an unexpected visitor showed up at the practice field. Eric Naposki, a man the size of a small house. An animal who looked like he was created in a Russian laboratory walked up the hill and approached the assistant coach, towering over him, the way a skyscraper casts a shadow on a street vendor. 

The head coach introduced him and Eric took center stage. The man was a specimen. Bronze skin with bulging muscles.  A look of divine godliness. A universal perfection to his physique but also something sinister. A blade tattooed to his back, like some type of brutal torture device.  

Eric shared that he was building a gym in town and would be training youngsters who wanted to play football at the next level, or just improve their speed and strength. I hung on to each word and vowed to worship him. I signed up immediately and we trained each day for the rest of the summer. 

The failure of our head coach was that he had a disdain for personality. He played Lineman in high school and then went off to the marines and became a tortured vet. He had the demeanor of a shot caller in a biker gang. A scowling, red skinned, bald man with a hooked nose and eagle like glare. He had fought and killed for the United States of America and moved through space like a relic found amidst the scattered ruins of some military collision. He’d speak and the hair on my neck would stand up.

Our coach lacked the ability to communicate with the skill positions. Not to state the obvious, but playing wide receiver requires a different exercise regiment than playing left tackle. In Hollywood they tell you to treat the stars like actors and the actors like stars. Coach treated the linemen like stars and the skill positions like locusts. It was  impossible for him to hide his contempt for split ends and wingbacks. He’d verbally squash us then have us run the Oklahoma drill completely outmatched. I was once singled out and called a piss ant cunt because I beat my chest after scoring a touchdown. It was the first time I caught the ball on the varsity team. 

Eric, on the other hand, knew how to communicate with and respect talent. He treated me like an adult, shared stories about personal development and consulted with me on what I wanted to do with my life. He raised his voice approximately 0 times, and had a gentle way of demanding a high level of energy and performance from his trainees.  I’d show up each day and lift whatever was in front of me. I’d watch him toss up 400 pounds on the bench press and then add plates to the squat rack. I’d see him do everything he demanded from us. He had charm and charisma. A twinkle in his eye whenever a female client walked through the gym. She’d look at him and we’d all know. He drove a big yellow Avalanche and I remember when he got a Nissan convertible. He looked better in that Nissan than most men look in a Porsche. 

Eric was aspirational, living a life of purpose. His 8 year old son played in the shade as we ran sprints and lifted each other on our backs. That was the summer of sun and steel. 2007. The workouts never got easier and the heat never let up. It was on the field where the transformation occurred. It happened slowly then suddenly. You look in the mirror one morning and you can’t look away. All that physical ugliness has evaporated. You’ve been cleansed of the bodily prison that tormented you through adolescence. This wasn’t puberty or growing into the self. This was direct action taken under a wizard of life forms. A shaman of the dark arts. A genius of the human spirit. Eric Naposki had the will and the discipline to see a change in me at the highest level. Matter rearranged. I started to resemble the universal. The ancient man. Bulging biceps and chiseled abs. A chest that protruded and deltoids that sprung up. Copper colored skin and a kind of restless ambition quietly burning. When you look this way, nerds turn their nose at you. You trigger some unnameable horror they despise in themselves. It is the unrecognized potential that they are left with, and they are in the dark on how to access it. But when you deny the physical form an inner turbulence seeks to tame those who have risen out of the chambers of the modern physique. Those who are no longer feeble locust-like creatures, but confident young alphas with an unlimited mindset. Eric knew how to develop this in young men. He built a program and stuck with it. He was the perfect leader because he himself abided by the conduct he expected from others.

Two years later, when Eric was charged with murder, I was in disbelief. The only thing that made sense about the accusation was that I knew he had an unimaginable past. He had been in and out of the NFL, played overseas, and worked at nightclubs in Los Angeles. He seemed like the type accustomed to secret societies and the workings of underground power. He had accumulated a certain type of independence I had never seen before. Not chained to any woman, wife, corporation or traditional family. Eric Naposki, the entity, was a liberated barbarian living life on his own terms, and this is what the justice system despised about him. 

Watch the 48 hours or the 20/20 that just aired. See how the wretched, soulless prosecutors make flat accusations to build a manipulative made for TV case. See how they condescend him with their elitist tone and display him in ghoulish bad lighting. Watch the glee they feel at having caged the beast. This is the work of evil forces coalescing to neuter and hinder his impact on the world. The case itself is riddled with mystery. Layers of motives and half truths. The man killed, Bill McLaughlin, a multi-millionaire medical suppliance entrepreneur who was shot in cold blood in his own home with his brain damaged son upstairs. A cultic feminine seductress who was entitled to a million dollars of life insurance money and a disgruntled business partner who owed Bill $9 million. No gun, no DNA, no fingerprints ever found, and yet still Eric Naposki, the toxic masculine ex-football player, warped into the middle, the final accusation of the wretched deed that took place in December, 1994.

Men who have played professional sports know not to suppress the enthusiasm in young males. Everyone else in the adult world does. They tell you to have a back up plan and to make sure you get good grades, when focussing on the absolute brain numbing lessons taught by dreamless teachers is less appealing than scorching your flesh on a hot iron skillet. This is the way of the modern world; to exterminate talent, individuality and manliness. This was the gift of Eric Naposki. He harnessed the aggression and instincts of the young males in the town. The ones that society attempted to break and subsume, and instead used an artists touch to carve and shape their figures and personalities. He made our skin, bones and minds tougher and more equipped for this world.

When I visited Eric Naposksi in prison, he was unchanged. Still the same man with an unbreakable spirit. Not brought to his knees by the viciousness of the state. He was still working relentlessly, engaging in the depths of  physical exercise, burning with the eternal fire of youth. Training men to overcome their  emotional baggage and neurotic psychosis day in and day out. “They don’t allow weights in jail,” he said, “So we lift each other.” Other inmates approached us and thanked us for his services. One referred to him as “God send.” A smile never left his face for the entire visit. 

This is not the type of man who should waste away. This is a man who should manage an army, conquer and expand. And though I do not claim to be an expert on the case, nor do I have any groundbreaking evidence to prove Eric’s innocence. I feel nothing but remorse for the family members affected by the death. It is just my opinion that Mr. Naposki has been treated and tried unfairly due to the relentless masculine power which inhabits him. And let us even assume that the official story is true. That Eric went into this prominent millionaire’s home, shot him with a pistol and made it out the other end with his girlfriend and his loot, enjoyed 15 years of freedom, amassing more children and property, only to be brought down in an unconvincing manner by a few bureaucratic dweebs. Maybe there is some type of sick and twisted hope in that. Maybe the lesson to be learned by the legend of Naposki is to not be inhibited by the opinions of others, but to live recklessly, burning the fuse on both ends, training the body to survive under any circumstance, to have unquestioning belief in yourself that never wanes or folds. Eric maintains his innocence, and for the record, I believe him. He has endured the harshest prisons in the country, beatings from multiple guards, weeks of complete isolation and is now appealing his conviction. Even in the direst of situations, in the harshest seas, capsized and tormented by pirates, the ascending life form is still visible. That is what I learned and continue to learn, though I am unsure if it can be taught.

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